Friday, 9 July 2021

Legend of the Selkie - Short Story by Greg Patrick



Like a Sandcastle in the Waves.

Legend of the Selkie

 

 

"A mermaid found a swimming lad, Picked him up for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown."-W B Yeats

 

Arran Isles Monastery, in the aftermath of Norse raid

 

            The monastery broodingly overlooked the heaving tumult of Celtic sea from its

windswept heights, under cauldrenous sea and sky. It coronated the dark crag-like bastion of

bird-swarmed rock formations, eternally besieged by the unrelenting sea and lashed by rain and

hail, pointing an accusing finger at the heavens...


            By the dwindling light of a candle he would set the page before him aglow with radiant

images rendered by a conjuring hand. A gifted scribe he toiled sleeplessly over the illuminated

manuscript till it was closed and bound between bejewelled pages to be reopened like a portal to

heaven's visions by king and bishop. On windswept Hibernian island nights when torrents of rain

and hail flagellated their stone walls, ever besieged by the harsh elements, the monastery by the

sea was the young monk’s world, a universe of four walls...


The murmur of the Celtic sea was his only constancy after his monastic world of daily

ritual was shattered by axe blows and haven became prison. The hours of toil over tilling the

barren soil and painstaking artistry of illuminated manuscripts seemed as distant the words of

bardic sagas...


            He closed his eyes, chanting the sacred words known by ever monk by heart...before the

weather-eroded shrine overlooking the crushing brink of sea...to keep himself centred...to keep

himself detached...yet the red visions of his brother monks being brutally slaughtered by

Norsemen intruded....


            He sought to banish the visions by recitation of chants as if exorcising ghosts yet his

mind strayed back to the recurring nightmare of them...Like a revelling of ghosts haunting ruins...

He opened his grey eyes to the sea and their haunted betrayed that the words would not suffice....

There was no true solace here...the mortal wounds of his brothers were inflicted upon his mind

and soul...


            Before seeking shelter, he lingered by the sea...listening to their incessant murmur...like a

ghostly choir...As he did so it seemed a disembodied song could be heard, rising from the dark

fathoms with an enticing limerence. It was an eldritch song.... wordless at first...yet he heard

lyrics that softly became incantation...He crossed himself and rose...He shuddered under his

monk's habit drawing his cowl closer over his tonsured head.... Surely the supply boat from the

isle would arrive soon, and they would see his plight...yet a succession of long dark nights

darkened the crimson horizon and none came in the fiery wave of the Viking drakkars...

Would the Norsemen return then ere long? To salvage the cached golden horde they buried?

He pondered how to kindle a fire without drawing unwanted attention from the sea

and betraying his presence to the Norsemen. He had salvaged the bard's harp that the brothers

had confiscated as a "vanity." He played by the seashore, eyes closed to the world, immersed into

the song...yet solace eluded him. He buried his brethren under cover of darkness reciting last

rites.

 

              Painfully famished, he attempted to scale the sheers jagged cliffs for sea bird eggs...Yet it 

was too precarious...the sea birds seemed to mock him with avian laughter. Harried by birds he

tried to loot their nests, he was dislodged and fell into the cold cauldrenous surf...He emerged

shivering violently and sputtering. He sighted seals basking in a sheltered cove and gripped a

sharp stone, yet staid his hand...


            She suddenly shed the seal pelt in graceful metamorphosis, spilling a cascade of raven

hair onto the sand and shapely limbs beckoning. He recoiled and made the sign of the cross.

She laughed at him...melodiously. Her startlingly impossibly green eyes cast their spell like

silence set to music and incantation. He brandished a crucifix at her as she laughed

intoxicatingly, her lilting voice maddeningly sweet…She seemed everything he was taught to

hate and fear…

a human girl.

“Vex me not temptress,” he sobbed.

Yet her beauty haunted him like an exotic fever writhing throes. He cursed himself for the

heretical desire she kindled. His mind strayed back…

He remembered the Norseman's raucous merrymaking in their plundered monastery.

"Skoll!" they toasted their chieftain over a hoard of bloodied treasures and corpses.


            He had been overlooked amid the plunder and slaughter and he remained so till they

left for the sea again.... He had fallen asleep at the scribe's pen to dream-haunted sleep in the

scriptorium. His hooded head bowed over his magnum opus, the dwindling ration of candlelight

played over the page of illuminated wonder before extinguishing. He was shaken awake  

suddenly...

            “Have I overslept mass again...forgive me!”

            “Rise brother and hasten. You must hide!”

            “What is amiss?”

            “Vikings! They are upon us!”

            “Abbot Josephus…”

            “He is slain! We can do no more.”

Warhorns sounded then like a banshee portending doom…He hastily scrolled his pages and

scurried down the hallway. There was a hellish sound of battle cries, shattering objects, gloating

laughter and the anguished cries of men butchered alive. He ran through past that sound of shrine

turned abattoir, almost colliding with a bloodied monk who staggered into his path.

            “Brother! Art thou wounded?”

He recoiled as the monk fell with a spear in his back, shuddering spasmodically.

As he tucked the scrolls under his arm, he dropped one and raced the tread of advancing boots to

retrieve it. He hid in the reliquary, under the floorboards, closing his ears at the nightmarish

sound of his brothers being interrogated and tortured into betraying the cache of treasures they

had come for...

He clutched the scrolled pages against his furiously beating heart, closed his eyes, chanting

soundlessly...The last cries of his brothers ceased, and he heard the Norsemen make merry over

their amassed plunder...

            “Skol! Skol!” they toasted, gulping sacred wine from silver chalices.


            He heard the clash of swords as warriors duelled over disputed looted objects as their

fellow Norsemen cheered them on. He cowered as he heard the agonised cries of the Bishop as

they flayed and ritually tortured him with the “blood eagle.”


            Stifling sobs, he clenched his cross so tightly blood seeped between his fingers. He

lingered for an eternity till he heard the distant horn signalling the cast off of the Norse ships.

Avoiding their sightless eyes and pale faces he looked for any of his brethren who drew breath. 

All were slain...He recoiled as he discovered a solitary Norseman remained there. He had been

entrusted to guard the remaining spoils. He was unresponsive...having overindulged in mead...


            Acting instinctively, he grasped the heavy gold-adorned ceremonial staff of the Bishop

and with a wild animal cry of rage brought it down on the Norseman's head again and again, till

the skull was shattered and brain matter and blood trickled down the walls…He dipped his

fingers into the blood of his slain enemy and that of his brethren and traced it on his forehead and

cheeks like a war paint of red tears…He saw himself mirrored in the helm of the Norseman.


            He wept then uncontrollably.... No he did not...

He felt nothing...a soulless stranger inhabiting his old body...

He staggered away.


            He took up the slain Norseman's sword, yet it felt alien to his touch...He tried practicing

without any reference. It felt unwieldy as he shadow-duelled, he paused panting as the twilight

 shimmered crimson on the blade and he saw himself mirrored on its surface.

            Who was he now?

            The Norsemen had cached their loot in a sea grotto to inevitably return for it. It was

beyond his strength to salvage. He could not salvage it but flooded it....

by dislodging rocks.


            His only companion in that maddening solitude was an albino seal, like a pale apparition

haunting the waves as his hooded and robed figure haunted the night shore. He had grown

haggard and dishevelled, a ghost-like figure. The seal watched him curiously and intently....

The disembodied chanting of his brethren seemed to haunt the air of his lonely nights…

When prayer seemed talking to air…yet the night would answer his yearnings in unexpected

ways.


            One eve, the Norsemen returned for their plunder and he was captured

He saw a dark cowled face spectral pallor of a face leaning towards him as he slept huddled by

ancient weather-eroded shrine. Eyes dark with urgency looked into his 

            “Arise brother! The enemy is upon us!”

It was then he saw the hideous axe wound on his brother’s temple.

He awoke with a stifled scream. He saw the nightmarish silhouette of a dragon-prowed ship and

the dark forms of returning Norsemen lumbering ashore. Moonlight gleamed on helm, axe and

sword. He was roughly bound in chains and dragged onboard.


            Shimmering dark eyes watched from across the dark waves, across the drakkar's wake,

 before submerging. Suddenly the wind subsided and the drakkar's advance across the

dark waves slowed and halted…wave and wind subsided and the drakkar merely floated

under the brooding sky.

            "Sacrifice one of the thralls to the sea!” their warlord commanded.


 The monk was roughly brought forward. Suddenly a choir of voices, soprano rose from the

wave, like vapours from a cauldron. A Norseman looked down at the dark surface and saw pale

enchantingly beautiful faces, smiling seductively as she beckoned. Her pale arm rose languidly

from the waves slowly ensnaring him, followed by others. He looked entranced into their eyes.

Suddenly she bared fangs, her eyes smoldering emberously. The seductive song became shrill

hungry cries, as the selkies swarmed them, dragging them beneath the waves. Sinking corpses

trailing blood and red bubbles rose to the surface. The drakkar's sail swayed like a fallen

banner. He saw her face then, hovering before him...felt her lips breathe air back into them...

She as magnificent to behold, against a background of sinking gold and bioluminous

particles.


            He resurfaced gasping, a ship with cross-emblazoned sail was within hailing distance…

 yet he wavered as he found himself looking into startlingly impossibly green eyes like the

Celtic sea in summer…and he allowed himself to be drawn down into the dark fathoms,

embracing oblivion…

 

 


 

A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man.  He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked 

with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and 

 

Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.


 


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